As part of your work for this class, you will be
learning to summarize articles,
discuss the theories on which they draw, and write a research
paper.
Articles listed here will provide you starting places from which to
do so;
you may also do your own library searches.

In this article drawing on feminist interests, Conger
contextualizes the kind of heroine Cathy is through
discussion of kinds of heroines conventionally or previously
presented in the gothic novel, the genre of fiction into
which Wuthering Heights fits.

Goff argues Bronte would have read animal husbandry
pamphlets and rejected planned breeding as producing weak
creatures, unable to withstand harsh conditions; she
therefore prefers humans closer to an animal state as both
stronger and more "natural" than humans over- civilized.
Discussion here of sheep breeding.

London, Bette. "Wuthering
Heights and the Text Between the
Lines."Papers on Language and Literature
24.1 (Winter 1988): 34-52.

London focuses on Nelly's life and her emotions as they
are implied by ways she narrates and characterizes the other
characters.

In this reader-response essay, McCarthy focuses on
Lockwood and shows why we shouldn't identify with his
stance; he argues that Nelly is a little more capable of
recognizing what she can't understand without rejecting it
utterly.

In this rather difficult feminist article, Newman speaks
of the gaze, a phrase used in film theory and as discussed
as representing a male position of power; she argues that
the novel rejects that version of the gaze through its
depiction of the 2nd Cathy, who insists others return her
gaze and whose gaze therefore rejects a hierarchy of
power.

This article unfortunately bases its psychological
reading on conjectures about the author's psychological life
but otherwise gives an interesting interpretation for the
apparent arrested development of the first Cathy.

Cranny-Francis argues that the novel constructs female
characters and the count the way it does and uses situations
as it does to "dramatis[e] some of the political and
social dilemmas faced by the bourgeoisie in the late
nineteenth century" (64), ultimately disarming threats posed
by the New Woman (late 19th-century women wanting equity
with men) and by other social, political, economic issues of
the period.

Howes argues that the real sexual desire in
Dracula is homoerotic but because such sexuality is
threateningly shunned by Victorians, it gets projected onto
the women in the novel and thereby mediated.

Macfie, Sian. "`They Suck us Dry': A Study of
Late 19th-Century Projections of Vampiric Women."
From Subjectivity and Literature from the Romantics to
the Present Day. Eds Philip Shaw and Peter Stockwell.
London: Pinter, 1991. 58-67.

Macfie focuses on ways Stoker's novel's treatment of its
vampiric females is echoed in literary and non-literary
thought in the late Victorian period.

See Christopher Craft essay,
"`Kiss Me with Those Red Lips': Gender and Inversion in Bram
Stoker's
Dracula"
(216-242). Possibly the best article written on the novel;
its content is clear from its title.

Smith argues that Dracula raises and responds to
political, social issues of concern to Victorians, discusses
how it does so, and points out that the novel nonetheless
has continued appeal, even though these particular issues
are perhaps not currently important, at least not in the
same way.

Drawing on psychoanaltyic and feminist theories, Williams
argues that although Dracula is male and is "experienced as
an evil, threatening father" (455), he represents what
western culture frequently identifies as female and
threatening. She links her argument to Christian and
pre-Christian mythologies.

Arata argues that in this period of imperialism,
Dracula addresses fears that if the British could
colonize less "civilized" countries, they could perform
"reverse colonization," infiltrating Britain or bringing
about devolution (as perhaps happens in Conrad's 1902
Heart of Darkness).

Case, Alison. "Tasting the Original Apple: Gender
and the Struggle for Narrative Authority in
Dracula."
Narrative 1.3 (Oct 1993): 223-243.

Case addresses who gets to speak in the novel, who
controls the story, and the relation of that issue to the
gender of the speaker.

Spencer argues that Lucy and Dracula are both treated as
belonging but marginal to culture, as representing elements
of culture to be purged to keep culture from degenerating;
it's historically based and focuses on other kinds of
novelistic "movements" preceding what Spencer calls the
"urban gothic."